Category: Google/Chrome

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Retiring, Retired, Retirement!

To all my subscribers… I am officially retiring on June 1, 2022 after 33 years in education (25 in Caroline and 8 in Stafford). It has been a pleasure getting to know you over the years and providing you with resources for you, your students, or your own children.

My work website has been moved to: https://sylanderson.us I will continue posting here for about a year or so. I also have a personal website highlighting macrame and other interests. Check out: http://mickeyandgrace.com to see what I’m up to. This is currently a work in progress.

I wish you all the best. Stay safe, carry on and have a good summer!

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Live Captions in Chrome

Chrome has a built-in feature that will caption any video you watch online. To toggle between on and off, go to Chrome/Settings (top right menu bar), and in the search field type ‘live caption’. Under the accessibility section, you can turn the feature on or off.

Captions are a great way for any learner to improve their vocabulary or ESL students to learn and/or read the language.

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Chromebook Split Screen

You can quickly split two screen views on your Chromebook display by first clicking on a window you want to position, then hold down the ALT key and tap on the left bracket ” [ ” (for left side) or tap on the right bracket ” ] ” (for the right side.

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Annotate Meet – A Chrome Extension

Annotate Meet lets you draw on your screen during a Google Meet. Annotate Meet gives you a small set of tools that you can use to draw or type on your screen while teaching your students virtually or meeting with colleagues online.

While in a meeting with your screen shared, click on Annotate Meet in your Chrome web browser at the top right. The extension can be installed from the Chrome Web Store. The drawing tools include a variety of pen/marker sizes, a customizable color palette, basic text typing tools, and an eraser. You can also clear everything on your screen with just one click.


Annotate Meet could be useful to show students how to navigate and where to click on their own screens. Other ideas could be to give feedback on student’s work, highlight key points in a reading or on a paper they wrote. Working out math problems on a blank screen would allow you to work your screen like a whiteboard, however, you may want to take a look at Google’s Jamboard for that. It’s another whiteboard tool.

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Little Alchemy 2

Combine elements to make up new elements, for example:
water and fire make up steam,
steam and the earth make up a geyser,
water and fire make up steam,
water and earth make mud

Little Alchemy2 is web-based or you can add it to your Chrome web browser as an extension that can be used offline as well. Go ahead and play around with it. It’ll get your students thinking about the states of matter.